A rainy spring week in Paris is the perfect time to eat boeuf bourguignon, but it isn’t the best time to shop for it. Trudging home in a May downpour with a kilo of beef in my handbag, holding an umbrella over a paper bag of potatoes and carrots, two thyme bunches bristling into my cheek, I was ready to give up, and I hadn’t even started yet.

Going to the butcher had been intimidating enough. My very posh neighbourhood butcher, La Boucherie Le Bourdonnec, is owned by the very famous Yves-Marie Le Bourdonnec; this outpost is run by one of the few women butchers I’ve ever met, Marie-Flore.

Boeuf bourguignon, that sacred cow of French cuisine, is a complex stew of beef and Burgundy (Bourgogne) wine that uses braising meats like beef cheek or paleron. Le Bourdonnec was out of beef cheek but Marie-Flore offered the (rather more expensive) basse-côte, from the forequarter. “I find it’s better for boeuf bourguignon anyway,” she said. “For slow-cooking, it gives fat and flavour to the stew.”

I try to agree with anyone who is wielding a big knife, so I acquiesced, and asked for small pieces. “They’ll cook too fast,” said Marie-Flore ominously. But she carved me a big hunk of basse-côte, trimmed away the sinew and the fat, and wrapped it up. I put the paper parcel in my handbag to protect it from the rain, much to her amusement.

Buying the beef turned out to be the simple bit. Herbs, carrots, mushrooms and wine were all easy to find, but I had spent a full day looking for pearl onions, the kind every classic recipe demands. “Des oignons grelots?” I had asked everywhere, including two supermarkets, a farmers’ market and a convenience store, before tracking down these mythical tiny white onions in the condiments aisle at Picard, a frozen foods chain.

At home, I considered several recipes. An inveterate recipe-adapter, I have the same attitude to recipes as to diets: I ignore the instructions I don’t like. I eliminated Yves Camdeborde, because his list of ingredients (chocolate, orange zest, nutmeg, ginger) was too long. Julia Child was rejected for asking me to take the dish in and out of the oven too many times. And Anthony Bourdain and Jamie Oliver were disqualified; only a Frenchman would do. Michel Roux Jr’s instructions were precise and clear, but, feeling that perhaps a half-French-half-English chef wasn’t Gallic enough, I hedged my bets on Alain Ducasse, despite the fact that he had defected to Monaco back in 2008. Two half-Frenchmen are better than none, as the saying goes.

Roux is empathic about not marinating the meat for fear of a “gamey taste”, but I like marinades, so I turned to Ducasse (“Don’t choose a good wine, because it’ll reduce so much you won’t taste its quality”). I poured a 2013 Bourgogne Passetoutgrains over my herbs, wine and diced onions, and put it all to bed.

The next morning, I overslept, but I reasoned that this could only be good for the marinade. Not so good for the people invited to dine, though; I estimated that lunch would be ready at about 3:30pm. Undaunted, I began to brown the beef, and then strained and simmered the herb-infused wine, picking scraggly thyme branches out of it while saying “Ow!” ineffectually. Then I browned onions and garlic, made beef stock and, ignoring Roux’s instructions about brandy and a cast-iron pot, neither of which I own, decanted everything into a covered terracotta dish, and put it in the oven.

Two hours is a long time to wait for lunch. Interested parties wandered in and out of the kitchen “just to check”, retreating when confronted with a threatening oven mitt. Meanwhile, Ducasse and Roux instructed me to slow-fry the bacon for eight minutes, then braise the onions in part of the bourguignon sauce, sauté the mushrooms, and boil and butter the carrots, all separately. “Then incorporate everything into the casserole and let it cook for a further 30 minutes,” said Ducasse, obviously a man of infinite patience.

My stomach wasn’t going to stand for all this; I just sautéed everything in a pan with butter and took the casserole out of the oven. But not so fast: Roux insisted I remove the liquid, and strain and reduce it, while simultaneously reheating the meat on the stove. I did, but I couldn’t bring myself to strain something twice in one day, so I just skimmed off the fat from the wine, boiled and thickened it to a sauce, poured it over the meat and veggies, and simmered everything together.

Thirty hours after I had first started, lunch was ready. Rain sputtered down outside, but my kitchen was warm and it smelt like wine and bread and thyme. The boeuf bourguignon was perfect: a lovely brown-dark stew, flecked with parsley and thyme and bay leaves, the meat tender and juicy inside, the carrots and the pearl onions like the first hints of spring among the stew, worth the three-hour wait. And there was just enough left over to prevent anyone having to brave the rain the next day.

(Naintara is a food writer based in Paris. Follow her on twitter >@naintaramaya)

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